It’s that time of year again where our team come up with their digital marketing predictions for the next 12 months. Admittedly, in our line of work, this isn’t just an annual consideration.
As the digital landscape is changing a mile a minute, it is natural for people to want to know what’s around the corner in order to stay competitive, so we put together this list, we believe will help your business stay ahead of the curve. The more you are able to plan ahead, the better equipped you can be for the challenges of 2019, so let’s get started.
#1: Google Searches Resulting in “Zero Clicks” Will Increase (Again)
Moz digital marketing writer, Rand Fishkin has been warning us about “zero-click” searches for a while now, and we’re listening. The idea that more and more people searching online are stopping at the Search Engine Results page (SERP) because they find the information before even clicking through to a site! The game is once again changing, and to ignore the significance of searchers clicking SERP results less often is to get totally left behind.
#2: On-SERP SEO Becomes a Term and a Tactic
We’ve written about why you need to care about on-SERP SEO, and in 2019, we predict that “On SERP SEO” becomes the latest buzzword in the marketing world. Something has to give here. We’re surprised more people aren’t talking about how much SERPs are changing, or alarmed by how fast actual clicks are declining.
If the trend continues like we expect it to, the companies that find a way to do amazing on-SERP SEO will be the biggest winners.
#3: Growth of the “Micro Influencer”
Earlier this year we asked what all the hype was about in terms of the explosive growth in Influencer Marketing. As a tactic, it continued to grow significantly in 2019 – We thought it would be interesting to share the illustration below to show a comparison against other topics like content marketing.
In 2019 we think brands will have higher expectations in evaluating the ROI on Influencer campaigns. To maximise the effectiveness in campaigns we see a big switch from macro influencers and celebrities to micro influencers who typically have smaller niche audiences but have greater influence over those audiences. A micro influencer is someone who has not reached the celebrity level. Typically their content receives very high engagement and generally, they cost less to employ! That been said we do forecast a rise in costs as these influencers start to understand the value that they bring to brands.
#4: Marketers Realize the Importance of Optimizing Content for Voice Search
We touched on voice search in our recent post about the four content marketing ideas you should try in 2019, so we’re going to double down here. With the rise (and vast improvement) of smart speakers and digital assistants, the use of voice search is becoming more prevalent. And yes, you guessed it – voice search is another thing responsible for less clicks on SERPs. Content that’s optimized for voice search will outperform content that isn’t in 2019 and beyond.
#5: Video Content Grows in Popularity (Again)
Earlier in the year we published a blog post that discussed how video is a great way to ignite your marketing campaigns.
However some of our readers might be wondering why we’re putting video on our predictions list – Didn’t video already happen? The short answer is NO! Its been much talked about and there is obviously lots of video appearing in our social feeds but for lots of brands video has not yet made it into their mainstream content calendar. Part of the reason is that video can be time consuming and costly to produce.
However there are some exciting new developments in the video space that might change all that.
Video technology platforms are coming on the scene that use artificial intelligence to convert existing content on your website and blog and generate a production quality video that helps tell your story.
Video has often been considered an “upper funnel” activity reserved for brands looking to increase their reach and improve their brand awareness. It does of course do this job very well, but with advances in marketing technology, video content now helps drive conversions. For example, you can now add “web form overlays” right on the video player so you can gate your content or add “call to action overlays” right within the video to encourage video viewers to take the next step.
Imagine being able to customise your videos so it included the customer’s name or other personal details stored in your company’s database? Well now it’s possible! We are working with our video partner at the moment to see how we can best harness this technology to help our clients so watch this space!
Looking forward already to 2019 to see how close our predictions are!
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